Tembujin’s face hardened. The litany of hate went ineluctably on. “Sardis and the Empire have suffered drought and pestilence because the kings who rule them have been ill as well. But soon there shall be a new king, Andrion’s true nephew, innocent of the guiles of Sabazel, fresh and unspoiled. And with him he will bring a new god. The living god, from the purple depths of the sea. He shall scour the land clean and restore it to health; we must prepare ourselves for his coming.”
“How can anyone believe such tripe?” Tembujin snarled. “Even if that fat little hypocrite had dosed everyone in the Empire with some evil herb …”
“I think Rowan has long since supplanted Bonifacio,” Andrion scowled. “He would need to dose only a few magistrates and priests. The people were already ailing, and their king in his uncertainty abandoned them.”
Sumitra sent a spray of melody over him, soothing him. “You had to leave the Empire, my lord, so that you can now return.”
He offered her a taut smile, the sinew in his jaw snapping.
“Hail Rowan, the right hand of Tenebrio. He shall lead us to celebrate the coming of the god—we shall reclaim the diadem, the power of the emperor, that was so vilely stolen by the demon-women—we shall avenge their corruption of Governor-General Patros, who was enspelled by their queen to give his only legitimate daughter, Valeria, to a Khazyari. We shall root them from our midst, slay them all in the name of Harus, throw down the walls of their sorcerous citadel and sow their fields with salt.” Dana gasped at her own words, and choked on the horror of it. “Two legions,” she whispered, “gather on the borders of Sabazel.”
Sumitra’s hand fell with a tooth-wrenching discordance from the strings. Her mind spun between disbelief and fearful certainty. Why should I be loyal to Sabazel? she asked herself. And she answered, Sabazel has never hurt me. Sabazel gave me Andrion.
“Waste Sabazel in the name of Harus?” exclaimed Andrion. “If they do such a thing, they will be irrevocably committed to evil!” His hand slapped Solifrax against his thigh, emitting circles of light and sound, a martial drumbeat beneath Dana’s voice.
Dana crouched over the shield in her lap, her face drained of color by its pale, stubborn glow. Tembujin rose to his feet with an oath, strung his bow, twanged the string. The note quavered down the wind, and the zamtak chimed in reply.
Dana leaped up with a cry, as if stabbed in the back. The shield pulsed with pinwheels of light, but her eyes went glazed and flat. “Patros!” she called, her voice spun out and snapped. “Patros,” she moaned, sinking again into her chair.
Andrion reached for her. “What, what is it?”
“Now,” she choked. “Right now, as we sit here, now.” She closed her eyes, turning away from Andrion’s hand. “He sits quietly with Kleothera and Declan in his tent, eating a thin soup—he will eat nothing that Kleothera has not prepared with her own hand, and they will give her little. Gods, how he has aged, torn by his loyalties—he came with the army to try and stop it, to speak reason to the commanders, but too many of them look through him and do not hear.” A tear sparked on her cheek.
“He wrote to Ilanit, warning her, and sent the message by a legionary—the ranks, Andrion, the ranks are confused and wary but not yet corrupt—Rowan sniffed the man out, caught him and read the message. He comes, like Rue, bloated with zeal and righteousness, and Bonifacio behind him puffed and pitiful—but I cannot pity him.
“No! They accuse Patros of treason, of collusion with Sabazel—father, deny it—no, he will not, he denounces Rowan. My brave, my foolish father!” She gulped and steadied. “They drag him from the tent. Kleothera rises, indignant, queenly, Declan in her arms. Bonifacio whispers to Rowan, that the babe was born in Sabazel to—to Andrion’s whore; Rowan smiles and pulls a dagger from his robes!” Dana leaped up, raising the shield, screaming in mortal anguish, “No, not my child! No!”
Sumitra’s heart clenched, squeezing the breath from her body. In one smooth bound Andrion was at Dana’s side, Solifrax a gleaming arc across the glowing surface of the shield. The star burst in brilliance. A wind stirred the stars in the sky so that they chimed. Servants peered astonished from the doorways of the mansion.
Dana swayed and Tembujin caught her, easing her back into her chair. “The lamp,” she wheezed. “The hanging lamp in the tent. A gust of wind has dashed it onto the desk, and the maps, the papers are flaming—pure white-hot flame licking Rowan’s robe. He retreats. Voices, and running feet from outside, and Bonifacio burrowing into the canvas. Run, Kleothera, run!”
For a moment the silence was so deep that the susurration of the sea reverberated across the terrace and shattered against the wall of the palace. The cresset guttered into pennons of fire.
“Valeria,” Dana said. Tembujin started. “Valeria looks from her own tent, clutching her children to her skirts. She sees Kleothera, Declan clasped screaming to her breast, racing through the camp. No one knows what has happened. No one stops her.”
Solifrax guttered like the torches and faded. With a mournful tremor the shield quieted. “Kerith,” cried Dana. “Kerith and a patrol are lurking outside the camp. They take Kleothera and the babe, they rush into the darkness with them.” She swayed, as if herself clinging to a saddle. “They will be safe behind the Horn Gates. For now.”
“No sentries?” Andrion demanded, in a voice that had made many a soldier cower. “No patrols?”
“And Valeria?” prompted Tembujin. “And my children?”
Dana’s brow was clammy white, her eyes glossed with tears. “Centurions mutter among themselves, disturbed. Patros, loyal Patros—they cannot believe him treasonous. They cannot believe his daughter Valeria treasonous, and her children, though half-breeds, are only children.” Even her lips went white. “Forgive me,” she murmured to Tembujin’s metallic face. “I repeat what I hear. And I hear, I see …” Slowly her seared face relaxed. “Astra, my lovely Astra, will soon peer at baby Declan and ask why in the name of the goddess has he been returned!”
The sea muttered uneasily below them and the wind set the stars to dancing. Sumitra looked from face to face, seeking reassurance, but saw none. In the faint light of the shield Dana’s cheeks were streaked with drying tears; “I acknowledge my father,” she whispered to herself, “I acknowledge my sons; forgive me.” Tembujin’s mouth was crimped so tight his lips were hidden, and his tail of hair rippled like a war banner in the wind. Andrion tested the edge of Solifrax against his thumb and smiled a grim, humorless smile.
The child moved again below Sumi’s heart, and she set her hand on the mound of her belly. There, there was the comfort. “The wind turned back the wave from Sardis,” she said quietly. “Irony, that Ashtar should save Sardis when Sardis so threatens Sabazel.”
“It is not Sardis that threatens,” said Andrion. “It is Eldrafel and Rowan. They use Sabazel to conquer Sardis, and through it the Empire.”
Tembujin muttered an outraged, “Half-breeds!”
The zamtak trilled faintly. Sumi glanced down at it. The tapestry was crumpled beneath its edge. She picked up the cloth and smoothed it out. “Look!” she exclaimed. “The pattern has changed!”
Three faces bent over her shoulder, green eyes, brown eyes, black eyes. Yes, the image was subtly different. Nikander’s stitched face looked out of the picture; in the uncertain light the image seemed to nod the proconsul’s calm and stoic assurance. Behind him fluttered scarlet pennons. Beside him his legion welcomed a squad of Khazyari cavalry from Iksandarun. Every face was turned toward a faint lavender peak crowned by a crescent moon with a star at its tip; Cylandra, calling Andrion home.
“Tomorrow,” Andrion said, “we shall not sail so far west as Sardis. We shall sail directly to the coast at Bellastria, my father’s old camp, where he first met my mother. Eldrafel has arrived too soon upon the scene; Sabazel has not been conquered, cannot be laid before him as a prize, will not serve to bind the army to him.” And with a dry laugh he added, “Tenebrio never was fed his proper sacrifice, w
as he? No wonder he failed, as his son—”
A rush of wings interrupted him. As one they turned. There, on the edge of the rooftop against the sky, sat a falcon, preening its feathers unconcernedly. But its eye sparked more brightly than the stars.
Andrion saluted. “As his son Eldrafel will fail.”
*
At dawn the legion left the shore and the town of Bellastria and climbed the escarpment that defined the tangled river bottom of the Jorniyeh. At dusk it camped on the flank of the high plains sacred to Ashtar. Scouts rode on, into the glare of the sunset, threading the fissures of land that lay like a grassy drape below Sabazel.
Andrion stood on a rocky prominence, on granite, not the tremulous black rock of Minras. “You are sure?” he asked Dana.
She allowed him one quick green gleam of amused disdain.
Andrion’s ears still rang with the shouts of the people of Bellastria. Where Eldrafel, he had quickly learned, had landed the day before, and from whence he had plunged like a rapist toward Sabazel and the climax of his lust for power.
In Bellastria Andrion had seized a moment’s grace and presented Niarkos with Eldrafel’s abandoned trireme. During his tour of inspection the sea lion had been as voluble as a delighted child, while Jemail’s lugubrious face had nodded attendance, his own reward still theoretical.
Andrion set his hand upon the humming hilt of Solifrax. His gut was hollow, seething with molten rock, hot and heavy. He told himself for the hundredth time, Eldrafel in his bravado comes too soon. The legions are not yet corrupt. They have not yet fought Sabazel. They will not obey if ordered to fight their brother legions.
Or would they? Andrion slapped Solifrax against his thigh. It shot fiery streaks through his body. If Eldrafel, in his sublime self-confidence, had acquired a habit of underestimating, Andrion, ruminating on his doubts, had not.
The wind stirred with the faint flavor of musk and smoke. The Sardian legions lapped like a noisome tide at the very gates of Sabazel’s city, despoiling the fields and the flocks and the wind itself. Incredibly, they still posted no sentries; whatever Eldrafel was, he was no military leader. Even though he believed the rightful emperor to have perished on Minras, Patros to be safely leashed, the legions sufficiently rotted—gods! My finely honed legions, blunted!
Solifrax, hot against his flesh, was as sharp as a razor. As was his patience. “He is coming?” he asked.
“Yes.” Dana stared into the twilight, her eyes glittering like beacons warning intruders away from the stony borders of Sabazel. Her features were drawn thin, her flesh so gnawed from within it stretched transparent over her bones and revealed the spirit beneath. On her arm the shield pulsed with an insistent music, exchanging resonances with the wind. Solifrax murmured restively in its sheath.
Andrion glanced over his shoulder, toward the east and the oval nacreous moon that watched, aloof and unstained, while the caldron of the western horizon bubbled with purple, mauve, scarlet, Rexian dye swirled with blood.
“Soon?” he asked again.
“Soon!” Dana snapped.
Tomorrow would rise the full moon of midwinter. The day of birth, Andrion thought, the day of battle. I shall be twenty-six tomorrow. When my father was twenty-six, he had not yet met my mother.
Had Rowan hinted to the legions that Andrion, that Bellasteros, were sons of Sabazel, and therefore to Sardian eyes bastards undeserving of the diadem? If Chrysais had known the truth, then so did Eldrafel.
But Eldrafel found it easier to claim Andrion dead than to discredit him; if anyone had earned the diadem, Andrion had, and the legions knew it. He would gamble on that, as he would gamble on Eldrafel’s strength having been sapped by the unexpected devastation of Minras, as he would gamble on his arriving too early, before decay had quite eaten away loyalty… . His thought came full circle and chewed its tail.
“There!” exclaimed Dana.
Solifrax skreeled. Andrion started forward. Hoofbeats rang down the wind. Across the waves of golden grass floated a black spot that swiftly became a galloping black horse. Andrion’s heart leaped. “Ventalidar!” he shouted. “Here I am, boy; come to me!”
Dana said, “They led him out caparisoned with your armor, your helmet, brought from Sardis for the purpose. They said he was to be a sacrifice to your memory, and a plea for victory.” She chuckled. “Rowan tried to ride him, you see, and was thrown onto his face before them all.”
“Good for you!” Andrion shouted to the horse. The beast was indeed god-ridden, like his master; his escape was an omen. Andrion grinned. Ventalidar thundered up the slope and reared, prancing and whinnying as if to say, so there you are. About time you returned.
Andrion caught the trailing reins and patted the stallion’s damp, pungent shoulder. One fetlock was splashed with rust; he had struck someone down in his break for freedom. Too much to hope that it had been Rowan himself. Ventalidar’s eye glinted in subtle equine amusement.
A spray of winter lilies, waxy white with the faint smell of rot, hung from the armor piled on the saddle. Andrion ripped the flowers away; hellebore, were they not? The dancing hooves mangled them into the grass.
Dana drew her sword and cut the ropes holding the armor. Yes, it was indeed Andrion’s own, polished into mirrors that reflected the rippling black plume of the helmet. Andrion held up his black cloak; it billowed in the wind. A very small storm cloud indeed, compared to the angry fumes of Taurmenios. It would, however, serve.
The strands at last knit themselves into a pattern. My pattern, Andrion thought, not Eldrafel’s. But the cost of that pattern had yet to be tallied; so much depended on whether the perverted legions would fight their own brothers. Surprise, a sudden reappearance as if shot from some celestial bow … With confidence damping but not extinguishing his dread, he turned and led Ventalidar, Dana at his side, into the light of the rising moon.
Chapter Twenty-One
A drystone wall snaked along the crest of the hill, the slate as skewed as the slopes of Zind Taurmeni. Behind the miniature battlement crouched Andrion and a score of legionaries, secretly eyeing the city of Sabazel.
He blinked, dazzled by the supernal clarity of the morning. His eyes seemed as sharp as a falcon’s, carving precise, lapidary images of plain, city, mountain from the light. Cylandra was an ethereal sketch in silver, a pale contrast to the opulence of Rexian purple; the plains were an unadorned brown, the stone city gray. The sky was the achingly deep sapphire of Ashtar’s gaze. The austere, implacable beauty of Sabazel, he thought, its magicks subtle and eternal.
The uncanny light filled his veins with liquid fire. The cold, pure wind rang his mind like a great bell with peals of confidence, and anger, and a certain salty humor.
The camp before the Horn Gate had been half concealed by a blue haze of smoke like a nuance of sorcery. Now, as Andrion watched, the quickening breeze teased the haze into oblivion. In the encampment stripped so distressingly naked trumpets brayed; centurions rode desultorily up and down straggling lines of men between tents huddled in haphazard clumps. The falcon standard of Harus drooped upon its perch before the stained cloth-of-gold pavilion. Miklos or Nikander or Patros would have had more than one officer’s rank for allowing such a pathetic mockery of a Sardian camp. But Eldrafel thrived upon mockery.
There he was, a cap of gold atop a makeshift dais. Legionaries passed in review before him, their feet rising and falling as raggedly as those of a huge centipede. Andrion snarled, “God’s beak, I have seen Tembujin’s children march more smartly than that!”
Dana’s face glowered like the shield. “He profanes Ashtar’s midwinter rites,” she hissed, “leading armed men to the Horn Gate.”
“He profanes everything he touches.”
On the dais beside Eldrafel stood two brown-robed priests. One made exaggerated flourishes and declaimed, “Witness the living god come from the sea!” Eldrafel bowed graciously. A half-hearted mutter of acclamation and a tentative clash of weapons warbled upon the wind. The other p
riest—Bonifacio, no doubt—was as squat and still as a lump of dung.
Beside the dais a cloaked woman, her jewels tiny winking eyes in the sun, stood with a boy. Gard, Andrion called silently. Gard, wake up, the end is near! A ripple of fire at his throat, and the child stirred fitfully. Rue’s hands on his arms coiled like tentacles. Andrion winced. “And Patros?” he asked Dana.
“Tried and condemned, and spared only long enough to watch the victory.” Her voice spattered against a reef of furious indignation.
A row of glints like bright coins were spears held ready above the Horn Gate. Twin points of copper were Sarasvati holding an insistent Astra up to see. And that gleaming helmet? Dana emitted a long exhalation, part sigh, part sob. “My mother,” she said. “She has been healing ever since we—ever since the shield was recovered. She is weak, but would crawl, if necessary, to be here at this moment.”
Ilanit would, at that. “Do they think to come out and fight a pitched battle?”
“Only men commit such foolish bravado. Better to sit out a siege.”
“But the sheer weight of the legions …” Andrion saw the city burning, Danica’s garden bare blackened sticks, survivors and their children hiding like goats among the crags of Cylandra. Eldrafel be damned, he carried destruction like a plague. Lord of shadows indeed.
The scene before Andrion seemed as static and stilted as a theatrical tableau. The sun blasted the substance from every figure, making each shadow only a delicate gauzy shape. Was this how the gods viewed the actions of men, joy and anguish alike only decorations upon the remote crystalline scrim of the world? Then I shall be no god, he swore, but a man, and suffer the indignities of living.
With a grim smile he backed down the slope. A mirage shimmered on the far horizon, a long wavering line pricked by light. Nikander, as was his custom, arrived exactly when he was needed. Andrion dispatched a legionary with instructions; Nikander would need no explanations.
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